When the FBI shut down the notorious online marketplace it made
international headlines and began a worldwide discussion about
how stable the future of bitcoin really is. Investigators have
admitted that they seized hundreds of thousands of bitcoins from
the Silk Road and its operator Dread Pirate Roberts, allegedly
the online persona of one Ross Ulbricht.

A new report from Wired magazine indicates that the FBI is now in
control of two addresses, or wallets, holding bitcoin worth as
much as $120 million. That total would make the law enforcement
agency the second-largest bitcoin holder in the world behind only
Satoshi Nakamoto, the currency’s inventor, who is thought to have
mined one million bitcoin in the technology’s earliest days.

There is a total of 12 million bitcoins in circulation and the
FBI’s haul from the Silk Road raid means the bureau has more than
even Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The Winklevoss twins, who
became famous when they sued Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly
stealing their idea for Facebook, said in July of this year that
they had taken control of roughly one percent of all bitcoins.

As of October, the FBI owned 1.5 percent of all the world’s
bitcoin, Forbes reported. Less than a quarter-million people own
a single bitcoin, although the number of accounts holding one
bitcoin has grown from 159,916 to 246,377.

While the relatively new cryptocurrency does have many legitimate
and quickly growing uses, bitcoin is best-known for its
popularity with criminal and shadowy internet figures because it
is nearly impossible to track. Bitcoin was required for all
transactions on the Silk Road, where customers could find illegal
drugs, child pornography, weapons, or a contract killer, among
other listings.

One of the FBI’s two wallets holds a fraction of Dread Pirate
Roberts’ personal fund, worth approximately $28.5 million. After
some difficulty caused by Roberts’ encryption, the FBI
infiltrated the private wallet. Yet that total is only an
estimated 20 percent of Roberts’ wallet, with much of his wealth
spread across other wallets that the FBI has not been able to
compromise.

As Roberts (DPR), Ulbricht is accused of taking a 7 percent
commission from each sale on the Silk Road. Two Israeli
researchers conducted a study in November finding that
DPR-operated accounts only received income in certain months of
the year, implying that DPR made deposits to different accounts
throughout the year.

“Assuming that DPR continued to receive at least some
commissions from Silk Road during these months,” the
researchers wrote, “it seems likely that he was simply using
a different computer during these periods, which the FBI had not
found or was unable to penetrate.”